Charleston Harbor Map by George Penington
Each map graphically shows
the ships around the harbor and their
appropriate location on specified dates.
George has plotted the locations of wrecks
such as the Blockade runner "Ruby" off Folly Beach. The
Housatonic and the Hunley are accurately
charted according to records and research that
is available.

We are now
publishing our newsletters in HTML. One of the primary highlights is that
we can now inserts images. We hope that you will like the new newsletter.
This issue is dedicated to my long time friend Roi Singleton who went to
sleep January 1, 2003 and never woke up. Roi was a very special guy who
acted as advisor to me both spiritually and technically since we met in
the late 1960’s. Roi is the one who suggested that I get with old friends
and to mend bridges; that life was short and true friends get scarce. Our
friend Roi was a Vietnam vet who served as a medic and never faltered in
caring for his family of friends. The color of pluff mud, he never
distinguished people by race or creed. In early 1970’s we all gathered in
a tavern called The Three Nags off the College of Charleston campus. Here
we would meet to have a glass of wine or his favorite, Heineken, play
chess or have intelligent and open discussions with professors and
students from all over the world. Roi had a clap trap memory for facts
and we recall when Dr. E. Lee Spence first came in and told us of his
discovery of The Hunley. Roi was a firm believer and supporter of Spence
and reconfirmed this before his passing. Ken Mayes, a local artist wrote
an inscription on a portrait that he had done of Roi, “I’m a better man
for having known you.” A truth that lasted over thirty years. Roi never
met a person that didn’t become a friend. He took a lot of the pictures
that are found scattered around this site but particularly the around town
pictures help had a special eye and loved Charleston like no other

Charleston Mayor Joseph P.
Riley Jr. has offered a new twist in the Confederate submarine Hunley
museum search: Revisit the idea of putting the sub in the Charleston
Museum downtown but also build a Hunley park complete with a
scale reproduction at the waterfront. Placing the sub in the
established museum would allow the Hunley to go on display quickly and at
a price cheaper than the current $40 million price tag, Riley said. And putting a 40-foot
reproduction at a pier next to the S.C. Aquarium would allow the sub's
life in Charleston
to be told via a dedicated Hunley park supported by a collection of
tablets, plaques, artwork and diagrams. It
would also be where most Charleston
tourists go, Riley said. "The visitor ... would be
able to go to this point and from it look out to the opening of Charleston
Harbor and see the site where the Hunley went down," Riley said in a
letter to Hunley Commission Chairman state Sen. Glenn McConnell. "You
would be able to walk out on the pier where the Hunley reproduction is
located and almost feel the same connection that the Hunley sailors had
with the waters of Charleston
Harbor," Riley said.
His suggestion that the museum site be reconsidered as an option comes
after McConnell rejected the three bid packages put together by
Charleston, Mount Pleasant and North Charleston to house the sub, calling
them too low. VIEW OF CASTLE PINCKNEY FROM PROPOSED CITY LOCATION FOR HUNLEY – THE
SECOND SINKING WAS JUST PAST THE SAILBOAT IN DISTANCE

It also is
an attempt to bring the Hunley back to the museum where it was initially
pegged to go after it was discovered seven years ago.

"We
continue to believe that the peninsular city of Charleston is the best
location for the Hunley," Riley said. "It is where most all of the
visitors who come to the Low country go on their visit, and the success of
the Hunley museum and sustainable attendance would best be achieved here." But Riley's suggestion may
not be what McConnell is looking for. On Friday, he repeated his assertion
that the Charleston
Museum on Meeting Street appears to be too small to house the Hunley.
Plus, he said, placing it there would cut into the impact of what he
wants: a solo Hunley/Civil War maritime museum of about 40,000 square
feet. "I appreciate his trying to think of ways to handle it, but the
Hunley would end up diluting
that facility, and I don't think that's in the best interest," McConnell
said, adding that he wants a museum focused solely on the Civil War at
sea. And although he wasn't faulting the quality of the museum's
collection, McConnell said the outside of the museum building "has a case
of the uglies." "I don't want to scale
back this project," he added, saying there is no rush to find a home for
the sub because the future conservation plan is uncertain. The sub is now
being kept in a coldwater storage bath at the Warren Lasch Conservation
Lab in North
Charleston. "The Hunley is safe, and she is affordable where she is," he
said. McConnell said Riley's
letter was the only formal contact he's had from the three cities since
publicly stating he thought the bids were too low. So far, the highest
offer - from North
Charleston - is about $11 million to build the museum at the north end of
the old Navy Base as part of the Noisette redevelopment project. Mount

HUNLEY
MODEL OUTSIDE CHARLESTON MUSEUM

Pleasant
is suggesting $7 million to put the sub at the Patriot's Point Maritime
Museum. Charleston has offered about $5 million up front to build the
museum near the South Carolina Aquarium. In his letter to McConnell, Riley
notes that instead of backing the $5 million bond issue, the city could
offer $550,000 per year for 15 years, which would amount to more than $8
million

Riley
said another advantage of reteaming the sub with the museum is that it
would be a joint effort with the oldest museum in the country. Also, he
said, having a Hunley park at the waterfront would be more inspirational.
"Remember, this is essentially the site where the Hunley was first
launched and whereHorace Hunley and the other sailors who died (in
the second sinking) were removed from the Hunley," Riley said.
"Arguably, this site without a building becomes a far more powerful and
emotional place." He called his proposal an "opportunity for citizens
to stand on the water's edge of Charleston Harbor and think about the
gallantry of those Confederate sailors, now almost 140 years ago."
McConnell said he wants to see how the cities supplement their museum bid
packages or raise their cash offers before proceeding. "No offer is
any good unless it can take us to the finish line," he said.

Schuyler Kropf covers
state and local politics. Contact him at skropf@postandcourier.com or
937-5551.BY SCHUYLER KROPFOf The Post and Courier Staff
Used with permission from Charleston.net and the Post and Courier

Eighteen members of the
Actors' Center of
Chicago Production Co. are scheduled to make a research visit to the
Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley in its temporary home at the Warren
Lasch Conservation Center in
North Charleston. The actors, director,
theater owner and artistic director are preparing to stage "Raising Blue,"
a new play by G. Riley Mills, set to open Feb. 13 in Chicago for
a four- to six-week run. The title refers to the Hunley's exterior blue
light. And Charleston's Footlight Players, headed by artistic director
Sheri Grace Wenger, are in negotiations with the Actors' Center to bring
"Raising Blue" to the Footlight Players' theater at 20 Queen St.
as its season-opener in August. "We are still talking to the Footlight
board about this but can't make an official
announcement until the board officially votes and gives its approval,"
said Wenger. The Chicago
theater group got in touch with the Footlight Players' after a member of
the Chicago theater staff saw the Footlight Players' theater and thought
it would be the perfect venue for a Southern premiere of “Raising Blue."

"Raising Blue" was one of this year's winners of Prop Theater Group's 2002
National New Play Festival. The touring group includes the cast;
understudies; playwright Mills; Lance Gordon, owner of the Actor's Center of
Chicago; Adam Thiesen, director of the play; and Jonathan Lavan, artistic
director of Prop Theater of Chicago. Thiesen and Gordon plan to tour
the Footlight Players' theater on Queen Street
Monday. The purpose of the visit is to give cast members help with their
preparations, Gordon said. Sunday, the group will
visit the Fort Sumter
Visitor Education Center and will board a boat for a tour of the Fort
Sumter National Monument. "With these tours, we feel
they will really get a feel of the place," said Hope Grayson, president of
the Footlight Players' board. Grayson said an August premiere of the
play will be a fund-raiser for the theater and
perhaps also for the future Hunley museum. Will "Raising Blue" feature
soldiers in Confederate uniforms tap dancing and singing? "The word is that it is
not a musical, but a serious show," says Wenger. For that, we'll have to
wait and see. After all, as playwright David Mamet, a native of Chicago once
titled one of his films, "Things change." Dottie Ashley is the
Arts Editor. Contact her at 937-5704 or
dashley@postandcourier.com.
Used with permission from Charleston.net and the Post and Courier

THANKS FOR WRITING CHRISTOPHER; YOU WILL FIND TONS OF FREE INFORMATION ON
SITE. IF YOU NEED ANY ADDDITIONAL INFORMATION, PLEASE DON’T HESITATE TO
ASK. I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU IN CHARLESTON. GEORGE

Sometime during
the construction the South’s first submersible, a native Tennessean born
in 1823 in Gallatin, Sumner County, just north of Nashville, would invest
$400.00 in the project.

Horace’s parents
were John and Louisa Lawson Hunley. He was one of four children and only
one of two who survived childhood, he and his sister Volumnia, two years
younger. The family moved to New Orleans in 1830 where John Hunley died in
1834 from a long and serious illness. The Hunley family was stranded, too
poor to move back to Tennessee until Louisa remarried a couple of years
later to a wealthy New Jersey Planter

Horace L. Hunley
became a wealthy rice planter from his plantation outside of New Orleans,
as an attorney he practiced law out of a small office near the French
Quarter. Hunley was an inventor and strove for greatness. Horace was a
state lawmaker and became a deputy collector of New Orleans customs,
realizing early in the War that it was crucial for the South to keep open
supply lines through her seaports. His dreams of a submarine could be just
the implement of war to accomplish that task. The fall of 1861 brought
together Hunley with his ideas and money, James McClintock, a tinkerer and
steam boat captain who owned a machine shop in the French Quarter and
Baxter Watson whose expertise was steam gauges. The small shop on Front
Street was turning out bullets for the Confederate Army and found little
profit in it. The first attempt at manufacture of such a vessel as a
submersible was in the Leeds foundry in New Orleans and tested in Lake
Pontchartrain.. By late February 1862 that boat “the Pioneer” had been
built.

More than likely
the trial run of “the Pioneer” was witnessed only by the investors and a
few military officials. Remarkably this three man submarine proved to be
quite seaworthy! During her trial run she was able to destroy a schooner
and two target barges.

The investors
besides Watson and McClintock included Horace Hunley’s brother in law,
Robert Ruffin Barrow, a sugar baron who owned eighteen plantations
scattered around the South and John K. Scott, an acquaintance of Horace,
described as a citizen of New Orleans and commander of the submarine
Pioneer.

These investors
applied for and received one of the first privateering licenses issued by
the Confederate government as authorized by President Jefferson Davis.
Privateers were ships of varying types owned by private citizens and had
the authority to attack and destroy Northern ships on behalf of the
Confederacy. This was done to supplement the almost non existent
Confederate Navy.

SIR: In compliance with the instructions
from your department, I have the honor to enclose to you herewith the
application of John K. Scott for the issue of a letter of marque to the
submarine propeller Pioneer, and a copy of the register kept in
accordance with said instructions showing the particulars attending the
issue of a commission to said vessel on the 12th instant.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

F. H. HATCH,Collector.

Hon. J.P. BENJAMIN,Secretary of State,
Richmond, Va.

To the Hon. Secretary of the Confederate
States of America.

SIR: Application is hereby made for a
commission or authority in the name of the Government of these States, to
issue to the undersigned as commander of the submarine boat called the
Pioneer for authority to cruise the high seas, bays, rivers,
estuaries, etc., in the name of the Government, and aid said Government by
the destruction or capture of any and all vessels opposed to or at war
with said Confederate States, and to aid in repelling its enemies.

Said vessel is commanded by John K. Scott,
who is a citizen of New Orleans and of 'this confederacy. Said vessel was
built at New Orleans in the year 1862; is a propeller; is 34 feet in
length; is 4 feet breadth; is 4 feet deep. She measures about 4 tons; has
round conical ends and is painted black. She is owned by Robert R. Barrow,
Baxter Watson, and James R. McClintock, all of this city of New Orleans.
She will carry a magazine of explosive matter, and will be manned by two
men or more.

And I hereby promise to be vigilant and
zealous in employing said vessel for the purpose aforesaid and abide by
all laws and instructions and at all times acknowledge the authority of
the Government of said States and its lawful agent and officers.

Considering his bond the undersigned prays
for the issuance of a commission or letter of marque.

JOHN K. SCOTT.

If a privateer captures upon the high seas
a merchant ship and cargo belonging to the enemy, and is unable to bring
the prize into port, is the said captor authorized to destroy the same ?"

A private armed vessel duly commissioned
has generally the same rights of war as a regular vessel of war and is, of
course, authorized to destroy her prizes lawfully taken when unable to
carry them into port or otherwise there is danger of losing them. In such
cases the officers and crew of the captured vessel must not be sacrificed.
It is so clearly the interest of the privateer to bring her prize into
port that I see but little danger of this power being abused.

" Having procured a commission and fitted
out a vessel answering to the one described in the application should I
subsequently, after entering upon a cruise, abandon said vessel and
substitute therefore a different class vessel not answering to said
description (except in name) but better adapted to privateering, would I
thereby forfeit the protection of the Confederate States and become liable
to be treated as an outlaw ?"

I answer
that the commission applies only to the vessel for which it is issued and
can not be extended to another. The Government in the case stated by you
would have no security for the observance of its laws and regulations
respecting privateers. The bond is made applicable to the vessel for which
the letter of marque was actually issued, and for none other. In the
employment of a vessel not covered by a regular commission you would not
be protected by the usual rules of war on falling into the hands of the
enemy.

(Excerpt from letter regarding privateers)

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,Montgomery, May 18, 1861.

In issuing letters of marque and reprisal
to private armed vessels to act against the United States, the Confederate
States have exercised a right which the law of nations clearly recognizes
as belonging to belligerents.

President Lincoln has proclaimed that the
exercise of this acknowledged right is an act of piracy, and that all
persons engaged in privateering in the service of the Confederate States
who fall into the hands of the United States shall be treated as pirates.

On a gray
and drizzly morning of October 15, 1863, Capt. Hunley filling in for an
absent Lt. Dixon who was away on business commanded. The Submarine H L
Hunley to embark on a practice run. At 9:25 am the boat left the dock.
Horace positioned the submarine in the direction of the CSS Indian Chief,
took one final reading on the
compass, and then closed the hatch above his head. He pushed forward the
diving plane lever and opened the sea-cocks to flood the ballast tank. The
Hunley disappeared beneath the surface. The crew of the Indian Chief, used
to the mock attacks against their ship realized that something was wrong.
They saw the Hunley dive under the ships starboard but she did not
resurface on the port side as
usual. Every one knew The Hunley had sunk taking with her the entire crew

A subsequent
investigation revealed that Horace Hunley had probably opened the
sea-cocks too fast. Only the doomed crew knows for sure what transpired in
the next frantic moments but the scenario went something like this. The
water coming through the open sea-cocks filled the ballast tanks and
spilled over into the floor of the boat. (An original flaw in the design
of the Hunley was that the top of the ballast tank was left open). Hunley,
realizing that the boat was filling with water but not recognizing why,
grabbed the pump handle and attempted to expel the rushing tide; he
screamed at Thomas Park in the rear of the boat to do the same. At the
same time an order was given to loosen the iron ballast slab bolted to the
belly of the boat. The crew grabbed wrenches and fumbled in the rising
frigid water to remove the nuts protruding up through the floor. In a last
effort Hunley and Park unbolted the hatches and pushed against the
hundreds of thousands of pounds of seawater on the other side. But it was
too late. As the water was rushing into the bow of the boat the increasing
weight caused the center of gravity to shift forward. The nose of the
Hunley tilted dramatically downward and she went into a fast 45 degree
dive. The steep angle of the plunge probably caused the bolts on the iron
keel ballast plates to tilt sideways jamming them and reframing the crew
from completely removing the nuts. As the boat struck bottom the men on
the hand cranks were jarred from their seats and hurled forward into a
mass of tangled bodies. These six sailors died in what must have been a
horrifying drowning death. Hunley and Park lasted a short while longer but
as the air in the turrets expired, they too succumb to asphyxiation.

Went the submarine
was opened Hunley and Park were both found with their heads still in the
turrets. Both men had their right hands above their heads indicating that
they both were in fact fighting against the wheels trying to open the
hatches. Hunley was found holding in his other hand an unlit candle. When
the submarine had plunged beneath the surface, the interior of the
submarine had been enveloped in darkness. Diverting his attention to
lighting the candle in his hand, Hunley had neglected to close the
sea-cock. Then in the panic of the sudden influx of water Hunley had
pumped madly to expel the flow. Had he simply thought to close the
sea-cock instead of attempting his frantic movements on the pump, the
disaster could have been averted.

On November 9,
1863 at the insistence of General Beauregard, Captain Horace Hunley and
the seven others of his crew were laid to rest in Magnolia Cemetery in
Charleston. They were buried with all the honors that befit their ranks.
Hunley’s gravestone reads: Captain Horace Lawson Hunley, age 39 years. A
native of Tennessee, but for many years a citizen of New Orleans, who lost
his life in the service of his country.

The
map based around the Civil War in Charleston Harbor has expanded to
include the Stono
River area. Based on Chart 11521 reduced to a manageable size of 11 x 14,
the image is scaled to fit a standard frame. The Latitudes and Longitudes
are scaled so that tracking can be accurately done. Each map graphically
shows the ships around the harbor and their appropriate location on
specified dates. I have plotted the locations of wrecks such as the
Blockade runner "Ruby" off Folly Beach. The Housatonic and the Hunley are
accurately charted according to records and research that are publicly
available.

Using
available Naval Records and History, reports, and documents the locations
of such ships as the Canandaigua, the probable course of The Hunley, and
the location of various other blockading ships in relation to Hunley the
night of February 17, 1864 are shown.

The
depth of the waters around Charleston
are based on soundings from 1973-96. The map includes locations of the
first and second sinking of the Hunley, the probable route taken to sink
the USS Housatonic and the location of the USS Canandaigua. All the time
and research in making this map has been extremely interesting and gives a
great perspective of the battles in and around Charleston
Harbor from 1861-1865.

Comments: LOOKING FOR SHIPMATES FROM
1985-1988,WHEN THE SHIP WAS IN SCOTLAND,L WAS A COOK IN S-2 DIV.E-MAIL ME
IF YOU KNOW ME.

Date: 20 Dec 2002

Comments: would like to get into the
uss hunley site and see what is new, but i caN'T GET IN 12/20/02

Date: 25 Dec 2002

Comments: Great web site. I can't wait
till the crew is laid to rest. I want to be there. Kim-

Date: 28 Dec 2002

Comments: Zsarora Croom (Savannah, Ga) stopped by to learn about
America's history 12/28/02

Date: 31 Dec 2002

Comments: With all the useless things
that are being investigated and studied today, it is gratifying to see
something of such importance in the annals of naval history being given
such attention by such dedicated and learned scientists and enthusiasts. I
only hope the funding can be found to keep the great work going. Great job
folks! Great job!!!

Date: 07 Jan 2003

Comments: Your web site is very
interesting. I found it to be informing. All the Hunley men died for a
good cause and deserve to be recognized by the government, if not for what
they believed in dieing for then the achievement they made in history.
These brave men deserve full military honors and a representative from the
U.S.N. to honor the memory of a honorable foe. Respectively, H.L. Fogle,
USN, Ret.

Is to provide specialized information to those
who are interested in the recovery efforts and history of the Confederate
Submarine H L Hunley. It is available free to anyone who might benefit
from the information it contains, for example, students and history buffs.
Our mailing list will always be kept private and will never be sold.